


The Land of Lost Hope

by Requiem



Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Corporate Chicanery, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Survival Horror, but it's not that scary, that's all I got I have no idea what kind of au this would be classified as, they still live on ships but on the ocean not in space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:42:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27175387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Requiem/pseuds/Requiem
Summary: Travel to the mainland has been banned for nearly twenty years after the disappearance of theHope, yet not only does the captain want to go searching for the lost ship, but Junlei Tennyson, captain and chief engineer of the last colony shipGroundbreaker, is tagging along. Parvati's not sure which one makes her more nervous.
Relationships: Parvati Holcomb/Junlei Tennyson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10
Collections: Fic In A Box





	The Land of Lost Hope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ziskandra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziskandra/gifts).



For all the years that Parvati had lived on the Halcyon Sea, not once had she ever been to _Groundbreaker_ , one of the original colony ships that had, decades ago, ferried people off the no-longer-habitable mainland to the many budding outposts on the open sea. Since then, most of the colony ships had been taken apart for salvage in favour of smaller, faster transport ships that were easier to maintain and could be kept in storage when they weren't in use.

 _Groundbreaker_ was the last colony ship left, in fact, if one didn't count the lost _Hope_ , supposedly grounded in swamp waters on Monarch almost twenty years ago. It had never been retrieved by the Board, and rumour said that the numerous salvage and search and rescue teams that had been sent out never returned. But rumour also said that the _Hope_ 's crew and passengers had started eating each other after being stranded on the mainland, and the Board had left them there to prevent their madness spreading to the rest of the colony.

"Attention everyone, this is your captain speaking," the captain said over the ship's intercom as if anyone else ever used it. "We have successfully docked with _Groundbreaker_ and you are all cleared for twenty-four hours of leisure time. If you're not back on the ship this time tomorrow, we'll be leaving without you. Thank you." The usual unholy screech of static that Parvati still hadn't managed to eliminate followed the end of the announcement.

"Hey, uh, Captain?" she asked as she caught the captain coming down the stairs. "Is it okay if I go with you to see Chief Tennyson?"

"This is your first time on _Groundbreaker_ , right?" the captain asked. "Wouldn't you rather go have some fun? I'm sure Felix can show you to a few places."

"Well, there'll still be time afterwards for that, right? It's just—I know I've been here for over a year now, but it still feels like I don't hardly know anything about fixing ships. And I figure that if there's anyone out there who could teach me a few tricks, it'd be the chief engineer of _Groundbreaker_."

The captain shrugged. "The _Unreliable_ 's still in one piece, isn't she? I think you're doing fine. But if you still want to meet Junlei, sure, you can come."

The crew took the elevator up to the promenade together, then from there, dispersed in all directions. Engineering was all the way at the back, past the colourful storefronts and their glaring neon signs, the advertising drones with their repetitive jingles, and the elegant façade of the Board embassy that stuck out like a patch of new paint on an old wall. Parvati couldn't help but stare in wonder at every new sight; not even in her past year of travels aboard the _Unreliable_ had she ever seen anything like this.

"One thing about the colony ships is they were set up for extended living in case the outposts didn't pan out," the captain said as they walked. "Once the old captain managed to save _Groundbreaker_ from a trip to the scrapyard, she expanded on the facilities that were already here."

"It's amazing!" Parvati said, just barely managing to rein in a squeal.

"Changed your mind yet about going exploring?"

"Nope! I'm good, Captain, lead the way." _Groundbreaker_ would still be here the next time they made port, but who knew if she would ever get the chance to meet Chief Tennyson again?

The chief engineer's office was tucked away in a corner of Engineering, elevated a little to provide a clear view of the entire floor. The door to the office was open, and the captain walked right in as Parvati hesitantly trailed in behind. The office was smaller and tidier than Parvati had expected, but she did tend to be a messy worker, and needed space to lay out all her tools and materials.

"Well, well, look who the tide swept in." A woman who was looking out one of the windows turned when the captain knocked on the wall.

"Junlei," the captain said with a smile. "It's been a while."

"I haven't seen you in well over a year. How have you been?"

"Keeping afloat. The _Unreliable_ 's got a mechanic now." The captain nudged Parvati forward. "Junlei, meet Parvati Holcomb. I rescued her from that pitiful wreck out by Emerald Vale that they call Edgewater."

"Ch-Chief Tennyson," Parvati managed to stammer out, allowing the slight against her hometown to go unchallenged. "It's such an honour to meet you."

"Junlei is fine," she replied with a smile that had Parvati's face heating up.

"Boy, it sure is warm in here," Parvati blurted out.

The captain frowned and turned back to Junlei. "Again? I thought I'd fixed that for you."

"You did," Junlei answered. "This is just how it is so close to the engines. Saves on heating in the winters, at least."

"What's the problem this time, then? I can count on one hand the number of times you've sent me a cryptic message for help. Actually, this might even be the first."

" _Groundbreaker_ 's an old ship; she's got plenty of problems, but most of them can be solved with scrap metal and clever engineering. Unfortunately, the part that's on its last legs this time isn't so easily repaired."

"Something tells me this isn't going to be just a simple retrieval mission."

Parvati knew she should be listening to the details of their next job, but she couldn't think about anything other than how beautiful Junlei was up close, even with grease marks smearing her face and her hair escaping its ties. The soft curves of her cheekbones and jawline were at such odds with the strength Parvati could see in the muscles of Junlei's exposed forearms as she idly ran her fingers along the edge of the datapad she was holding.

"Parvati will show you around the ship, won't you, Parvati?"

Parvati snapped out of her daydream of Junlei's arms wrapped around her in a loving embrace. "I will? I mean, of course I will! But uh, why?"

"Junlei's coming with us on the job." There was an amused glint in the captain's eyes. "Unless you know how to uncouple a nav module by yourself?"

"I didn't even know you could uncouple those."

"Help Junlei bring her things over to the _Unreliable_ , then."

"There's no need," Junlei said. "I don't travel with much, and I know where your ship is docked."

"Humour me. I can't have the people of _Groundbreaker_ thinking I won't be giving their captain the very best treatment while she's away. I'll see you on the ship." The captain winked at Parvati before leaving her alone with Junlei. Oh Law, had she been that obvious?

"I don't mean to put you out, Parvati," Junlei said once the captain was gone. "I'm sure you have other things you'd rather be doing."

"Oh, no, not at all, Chief Junlei. There's nothing I'd rather—I had some questions I wanted to ask you, actually. About engineering, and whatnot."

"Just Junlei will do." She smiled again, sending Parvati's stomach twisting into delighted knots. "And I'd be more than happy to answer your questions."

Junlei was popular amongst the residents of _Groundbreaker_ —extremely popular. Parvati could barely get a word in edgewise between all the people coming up to them to wish Junlei a safe journey and relay their hopes that she would be back soon. And Junlei, gracious as she was, stopped to return every one of their greetings and give them her thanks.

"I'm so sorry, Parvati," she said once they arrived at the _Unreliable_ 's berth. "You had something you wanted to ask?"

"It's nothing, really," Parvati began, but at Junlei's encouraging look, she continued, "but we've had this intercom problem for over a year now, and I can't figure out how it's been wired up. The system we used at the cannery was much simpler, and if I cut the wrong wire there, we wouldn't risk being stranded in the middle of the sea."

"The electricals of the A-twos are finicky things," Junlei said. "I'm not surprised this ship is named what it is. Why don't you let me take a look? Maybe I can help."

Junlei set down her bag just inside the door and pulled out a toolkit while Parvati retrieved hers from the cargo bay, then the two of them got to work.

Parvati was so engrossed in their task that she didn't even notice an hour and a half had passed until they'd found and fixed the problem: a single frayed wire in the wall outside the captain's quarters.

"Oh gosh, look at me, I'm asking you to do work when I'm supposed to be showing you to your room!" At least there was no one around to witness Parvati's blunder aside from ADA, who would keep her secret. "It's right up these stairs over here." Parvati picked up Junlei's bag—it was the least she could do after being such a terrible host—and led the way upstairs.

It was a good thing SAM was so obsessive about cleaning the ship, because it would have been downright embarrassing to have to show Junlei to a spare cabin that no one had looked in on since they'd kept those crates of sprats in there a few months ago. But it'd been tidied up quite nicely, with fresh sheets, a sparkling window, and not a single sprat dropping anywhere.

"The galley's down the end of the hall and the bathroom's just past that; we take turns making dinner, but I'm sure you won't have to since you're a guest. Oh, and my room's right next to yours, so if you need anything, just give me a holler! Or I guess you could always come knock on my door; that'd probably be easier. And quieter. And if I'm not there, I'm usually down in the cargo bay. I think that's it." Parvati realised she was still holding on to Junlei's bag, and set it down inside the room.

"Thank you, Parvati." Junlei was smiling that warm, sincere smile of hers that left Parvati feeling weak at the knees.

"I'll just let you get settled in, then!" Parvati beat a hasty retreat into her own room.

Once the door was safely closed behind her, she let out a long breath. She hadn't felt this way about anyone since…no, that way only laid bad memories.

Parvati had been following Junlei's career ever since a news story about her promotion to captain of _Groundbreaker_ a few years back had played on the television in the cannery break room. Parvati had fallen in love in an instant with Junlei's soothing voice and the calm, authoritative air she projected.

Over the years, Parvati would always try to catch interviews with Junlei on the aetherwave, and she hunted down all the instructional videos Junlei had featured in about repairing engines and recalibrating power regulators. Everything she knew about ships, Junlei had taught her.

She never could have imagined she would meet Junlei for herself, but not only was Junlei more beautiful in person, but also every bit as remarkable as she appeared to be on screen. How could someone like her ever be interested in someone so…ordinary?

"This could be your only chance," Parvati whispered to herself. "She's only here for a few days, then she'll be gone forever."

Well, not _forever_ forever, but as chief engineer and captain of _Groundbreaker_ , she surely wouldn't have time to entertain Parvati's inane questions or guide her through ship repairs.

Try as she might, though, Parvati couldn't come up with an icebreaker statement that didn't sound too awkward or stalkerish, so she just stayed in her room—hid, really—until someone knocked on the door. It was Junlei, carrying a stack of books.

"Here, I brought these with me and thought you might like to have a read. I have them electronically too if you want me to transfer them to you, but I like the feel of pages between my fingertips when I read." Junlei held out the books; the one on top read _Nautical Navigation Systems: Part One_.

"No, I prefer it too." Parvati gently took the books as if they'd been printed on sheets of gold leaf instead of paper. "Thank you. That's really sweet of you."

Junlei's eyes crinkled with a smile. "I hope you find them useful."

Parvati eagerly devoured _Nautical Navigation Systems: Part One_ , the dry text made infinitely more bearable by the thought that Junlei had personally read and recommended the book. She was so engrossed in it that she didn't even notice when the crew began filtering back to the ship, and the captain had to knock on her door twice to ask if she was going to join them for dinner.

The next morning, once everyone was back on the ship—with Felix and Nyoka narrowly making the deadline, as usual—the captain called for a meeting in the cargo bay. Which was odd for several reasons: the captain rarely bothered with crew meetings, preferring to spring the mission parameters on the team chosen for the job after they'd already left the ship; and the rare meetings they'd had during Parvati's time on the ship had been held in the kitchen.

"I wanted to get this out of the way before we left in case what I say next makes any of you change your mind about being on this crew," the captain began. "Our next mission is going to bring us to Monarch. More specifically, to the _Hope_. Or whatever's left of her."

Parvati knew she'd missed _something_ yesterday while staring at Junlei instead of listening to her conversation with the captain, but Parvati never would have guessed it was something like this.

As everyone began to voice their thoughts all at once, the captain put up a hand to ask for silence.

"Yes, I know travel there is forbidden, but _Groundbreaker_ needs us to do this if she's to stay in operation: without a nav module made specifically for the colony ships, she's as good as dead in the water. And out of all the freelancers out there, we're the best suited for the job because we have Nyoka, a Monarch native to help us survive the wilderness, and because…" the captain took a breath, "because I was one of the lost colonists of the _Hope_."

The cargo bay erupted into a cacophony of everyone trying to talk over each other.

"I don't want to talk about it," the captain said loudly. "It was not a good time for anyone involved, and I'm not thrilled to be going back, but I will, to save _Groundbreaker_ and honour the _Hope_ by bringing at least some small part of her back. However, none of you are bound by this same obligation, which is why I'm giving anyone who wants to take it, the chance to back out now. You can stay here on _Groundbreaker_ and find a new crew, or rejoin the _Unreliable_ once we return. If we return. No guarantees."

"I'm with you all the way, boss," Felix was the first to say. "Even if it means going out there."

The others were quick to voice their agreement, even SAM, in his own special way.

"Uh huh," Parvati said. "We've got your back, Captain."

The captain exhaled heavily. "I'm glad. Really glad. There's no one else I'd rather have at my back than you all."

They moved to the kitchen after that, where the captain spread a large map of the Monarch coastline over the dining table.

"This is the _Hope_ 's last confirmed location." The captain pointed at the mouth of the Typhon River where it flowed out into the Halcyon Sea. "She was sighted by UDL patrol ships while en route to pick up more colonists from further inland. Her last transmission to Byzantium Control indicated she was on schedule and that all her systems were functioning correctly. Then she and her crew were never heard from again.

"The most popular theory is that she veered off course into shallow water and became grounded, likely somewhere around here, where the water is murky and even the radars can't accurately measure how deep the water is." The captain circled an area of small, closely-grouped blobs further inland that branched off from the main arm of the river. "It doesn't explain why the crew didn't answer their radios or why no one could get a lock on the ship's locator beacon, but that's where we'll be starting."

Nyoka took over from there. "The first and most important rule of surviving on Monarch is _don't let anything touch your bare skin_. Seriously, I can't say it enough. Act like everything will burn your skin right off if it makes contact. And while we're on that, don't breathe unfiltered air; it'll do the same thing to your lungs. And finally, don't piss off the wildlife. You won't live to regret it."

They reached the Typhon River at noon after collectively holding their breaths and praying that the holographic shroud would hold every time they passed a UDL patrol ship. Everyone was crowded into the control room, jostling each other for the best view out the windows.

Monarch didn't look so scary from here with its long white stretches of beach littered with broken shells and clumps of dried-up seaweed, bordered by spindly grasses and thorny shrubs. But the shrubs turned into trees, and trees—now those were frightful things. Tall as a house but flexible enough to sway with the wind, waving their branches and blocking out the light with their leaves. There must have once been trees that weren't poisonous, logic told Parvati, like they'd grown flowers in Edgewater that didn't carry the toxins of those from the mainland, but no one had tried to grow trees at sea yet, and the unfamiliar sight unsettled her.

"Look!" Nyoka hissed, elbowing her way to the front to point at a shape moving through the undergrowth. "A raptidon."

It was hard to tell from this distance, but Parvati thought it looked to be the same size as the biggest Halcyon bluefin saltuna that had ever been caught in Edgewater. Mayor Tobson had commissioned a full-scale model of it to hang from the cannery ceiling.

"Do they all get that big?" she asked.

Nyoka chuckled. "Oh, that one's just a baby. You can tell 'cause its frills haven't grown in yet."

Parvati could feel Felix tense next to her. She looked over and shared a stricken look with him.

"I just can't believe there are still animals that live out here," Ellie said.

"Only the ones that could adapt quickly survived: those that had been feeding off the corporations' industrial waste for centuries, building up a tolerance to the poisonous chemicals and incorporating it into their own biologies. Rapts have poisonous claws and can spit acid, and that's just the tip of the iceberg that's the dangers of Monarch. Seriously, don't piss off the wildlife."

The further upstream they travelled, the denser the foliage grew, and the narrower the river became.

"Well there's our first problem," the captain said, standing at the top of the stairs to the control room and looking over everybody's heads. "The river at this point looked much wider on the maps."

"Depending on how deep the water is, I doubt _Groundbreaker_ could have made it much further upstream," Junlei added, coming to stand next to the captain. "But the river would have been different twenty years ago. No one's done an extensive aerial survey of the mainland for at least that long."

"ADA, how's our course looking?" the captain asked.

"Still on target, Captain," ADA replied through the speakers in her terminal. "According to the data I've extrapolated, we should reach our destination in two point six hours."

"Good. Let me know when we're ten minutes out, and keep me posted on any changes." The captain and Junlei left the control room.

Two hours and thirty-six minutes was a long time to stand in front of the windows staring down the river or into the jungle, and most of the crew returned to what they'd been doing before ADA had announced that they were entering the river.

Parvati had been in her room reading _Nautical Navigation Systems: Part Two_ , but she brought the book down to the control room so that she would be the first to know if ADA found anything exciting. No one would know if she sat in the captain's chair.

At around the two-hour mark, ADA announced, "We can go no further towards our destination," and powered down the _Unreliable_ 's engines.

Parvati looked out the window, but this stretch of river didn't seem much different to the rest that had come before.

"That can't be right." The captain came to stand next to Parvati, but looked to the side instead of the front where the river stretched out before them. "That's supposed to be a fork in the river."

Parvati looked to the side too, and saw a small opening through the trees that the _Unreliable_ wouldn't be able to squeeze through, let alone the _Hope_.

Nyoka entered the control room. "Swamp could've grown over," she said after taking in the sight.

"Just over this part, at the exact location we're supposed to veer off from the main channel?"

Nyoka shrugged. "It's Monarch. Stranger things have happened."

"ADA, run a scan of the area. Make sure all our scanners are tuned to detect the composition of the _Hope_ and the Board ships that were sent after it."

While ADA ran her scans, the rest of the crew gradually began to filter in to the control room. Parvati shuffled back a little further each time someone entered to give them space to look outside, and eventually ended up by the door when Junlei joined them. Her expression was unreadable, but she exuded a steady calm by Parvati's side.

"I have something, Captain," ADA said. "A large concentration of metal approximately two hundred metres north-west of our current position."

"Can you still open a channel to Groundbreaker Control?" the captain asked.

"Negative, Captain. We are out of range."

"Only ships you'll get in contact with around here are UDL patrols," Nyoka said.

"No matter," the captain said. "I only wanted to test a theory—both the _Hope_ and the search and rescue ships sent by the Board were never heard from again after entering this area."

"Some kind of scrambler?" Junlei asked. "Do you think the _Hope_ was sabotaged?"

"I certainly don't buy that an entirely colony ship can just disappear by itself. Not even on Monarch." The captain turned sharply and ushered them all out of the control room. "Ready the lifeboats and enviro-suits. We're going in."

It wasn't often that their missions took them off the ship for extended periods of time, but they'd run enough evacuation drills to know what to pack in the event they had to leave the ship behind. This was the same thing, mostly, except they could leave their personal items behind, and they only needed a day or two of food instead of emptying out all the kitchen cupboards.

The _Unreliable_ carried two enclosed lifeboats with dedicated airlocks and advanced filtration systems that could deal with Monarch's atmosphere. Even though the entire crew could feasibly squeeze into one, the captain had them cast off both anyway; they would appreciate the extra space with the added bulk of the enviro-suits, and there would be no one left behind who would have need of a lifeboat. They sat four to a boat, Parvati in the first one with Junlei, Felix, and the Captain, while Nyoka led the party in the other boat that followed close behind.

Two hundred metres didn't seem like that great a distance, but the branch of the river they followed—more of a creek, really—twisted and turned this way and that, and with their limited vision through the lifeboat windows, they couldn't find a shortcut that would take them straight to whatever ADA had detected.

Eventually, the small handheld scanners they carried with them began to beep, right before the captain almost steered the lifeboat into what looked like a wall of solid metal.

"That doesn't look like a part of the jungle," Felix said.

Even before the captain backed up the lifeboat and the hollowed-out wreck of part of a ship's hull came into view, Parvati knew they'd found the _Hope_. It made her chest ache to think of such a magnificent ship being left here to be overrun by the wilderness, not to mention the hundreds of crew and passengers who had gone down with her.

"That's her alright," Junlei said, peering out the front window. "I can still recognise the prow."

"Where's this nav module of yours?" the captain asked.

"It should be linked to the bridge computers. So the middle of the ship…wherever that's gone."

They continued to follow the creek, more slowly now as not only did the captain have to navigate around the protruding roots of the trees that bowed over them, but also the metal debris littered in the water. Aside from the two lifeboats, there didn't seem to be any movement in the forest: no swaying of tree branches, raptidons stalking through the undergrowth, or even little fish darting through the water. It felt like they were sailing through a graveyard.

"Stop here." Junlei's quiet but commanding voice had the captain bringing them to a stop immediately. "Shine the lifeboat's lights over there."

The captain turned the lifeboat in the direction Junlei was pointing, and the lights on the front fell on a large chunk of hull tipped over on its side and half submerged in the water, half propped up by several trees that looked like they were growing _through_ the hull. A gaping hole on the side of the hull facing them beckoned them in.

As they neared the wreckage, Parvati could see that the edges of the hole had been worn down by more than just rust—some marks looked distinctly tooth-shaped. A shiver ran down her spine as she scanned the surface of the water around them again; maybe they weren't as alone out here as she'd thought.

"This is it," Junlei said when the captain stopped the boat next to the hole in the hull. "The bridge should only be about ten metres above us, but if we can't cut through the floors—and I doubt we'll be able to, even after twenty years of exposure to Monarch's atmosphere—we'll have to take the long way around."

The captain had Nyoka's boat stay outside to keep watch while the rest of them donned their enviro-suits and climbed inside.

"Most of the interior looks intact," Junlei said, shining her torch around once she'd made it high enough that the water only reached her ankles and not her waist. "I'd say we're safe to press forward."

"Lead on," the captain said.

The deck creaked and groaned under their weight as the four of them made their way through the damp corridors slippery with the thin layer of algae that covered everything. That the deck was at an angle did not help with being able to get a firm grip under their boots, but fortunately, the _Hope_ had been built to weather the open seas, and railings ran down nearly every corridor for them to hold on to.

Taking the long way to the bridge required jumping over a sizeable gap at one point. It looked like something had torn through the ship, twisting the metal struts and peeling the wall panels away from the framework, but whatever it was, it was long gone now. All that accompanied them was the sound of their footsteps.

The bridge was in surprisingly good condition when they managed to pry the door open using crowbars. It had been designed to withstand all manner of assault, Junlei explained, including chemical attacks, which was why she'd been hopeful the nav module would be able to be retrieved mostly intact.

"Nyoka, we've made it to the bridge and should be out in…" the captain gave Junlei a questioning look.

"Two hours," she said after a moment's thought.

"Two hours," the captain repeated. "It's all quiet in here, anything on your end?"

There was no reply.

"Nyoka, please respond."

Still, there was nothing. The captain tried the other crew members as well, but none of them responded.

"Being surrounded by so much metal might be affecting the radios," Junlei suggested.

"Still, Felix and I had better make sure nothing's happened," the captain said. "Either way, we'll make sure to come straight back; we should try to stick together as much as we can. But just in case—the two of you are armed?"

Parvati had left her hammer back on the lifeboat so she could carry her tools instead, but she still had a pistol on her hip, as did Junlei.

"Good. If you manage to finish before we get back, stay here so we don't run the risk of missing each other. Let's go, Felix."

When their footsteps faded away, the silence that followed seemed to be even more profound. Parvati might have remained frozen to the spot if the clatter of Junlei's tools by the navigation terminal hadn't startled her.

"Parvati?" Junlei called. "I could use your help; the casing's rusted shut."

"Oh, of course!" Parvati hurried over and dropped to one knee next to where Junlei was trying to remove the rusted screws.

"Did you bring a screw extractor? I have some spares." Junlei turned to Parvati as she held out the tool. The light inside her helmet reflected off her eyes, highlighting lighter specks of brown that seemed to make her eyes sparkle.

 _You're staring_ , Parvati's brain informed her even as it made no move to stop her from continuing to stare. "Thanks," she eventually managed to say. She _had_ brought a screw extractor, but took the offered one from Junlei's hand anyway before moving further away to start on the other side of the casing.

"Do you go out on expeditions like this much?" Parvati asked to keep things from falling eerily quiet again.

"Not really, no. I've seen much of the Halcyon Sea travelling on _Groundbreaker_ , but by virtue of being chief engineer then captain, I've always delegated such tasks to my crew. The last time I remember running an errand…we were docked in Cascadia and my grandmother sent me to the bakery for sweetheart cakes." Parvati couldn't see Junlei's face, but she could hear the smile in her voice. "I must have been about eight or nine. After that, I was too busy climbing around the maintenance shafts and through the air ducts to leave the ship."

"I was the same way with the cannery in Edgewater," Parvati said. "I started following my father to work as soon as I was old enough to hold a wrench. He officially took me on as his apprentice when I was ten."

"He's taught you well. Is he waiting for you back in Edgewater?"

"No, he passed a few years back. To be honest, I don't think I would've been able to leave knowing he was still back there, all by himself."

"I'm sorry I couldn't have met him. He must have been a special person."

"Yeah, he was."

When they finally pried the casing open, Junlei was the first to get a look at the nav module.

"Parvati," she said, her voice tight. "Look at this. What do you make of it?"

Junlei moved aside to let Parvati look into the console; the innards were similar to the diagrams in chapter four of _Nautical Navigation Systems: Part One_ that Parvati had committed to memory, but several of the wires weren't connected to where they should be, and some of the ports were even soldered shut.

"That doesn't look anything like the book."

"I think your captain might have been right. None of the _Hope_ 's engineers would have done anything like this; the only explanation is sabotage."

"Who would do such a thing?"

"The only ones I can think of who would be despicable enough are the Board."

"But why? Wasn't the _Hope_ was helping to evacuate people from Monarch?"

"And there lay the problem: the Board didn't want us to." Junlei's face was mostly cast in shadow from this angle, but what little Parvati could see looked grim. "Even twenty years on from the Exodus, there were more people left on the mainland than could be housed in the outposts. The Board tried to leave them all there, but Captain Hunte of the _Hope_ and my grandmother, captain of _Groundbreaker_ , refused to turn in their ships for salvaging and continued to ferry colonists off the mainland. You know of the Hazard Clause?"

"Right, it says that anyone who travels to Monarch is considered irreversibly contaminated, and they are to be barred from all outposts and vessels for the good of the colony." If her dad had still been alive, Parvati might have given a second thought to coming on this expedition, but now, the possibility of never being allowed to return to Edgewater didn't seem that big of a problem.

"Before the _Hope_ disappeared, the Board had been pushing to have that clause added to the Halcyon Code for years. Public opinion had been strongly against it due to people still having family or friends left on Monarch, but that all changed twenty years ago. After the Board declared the _Hope_ lost for good, they enacted the Hazard Clause the very next day, and the public outcry was almost non-existent."

Parvati could hardly wrap her head around the idea of the Board possibly being responsible for the fate of the _Hope_ and the colonists lost with her, but fortunately, Junlei didn't seem to want to continue talking about it either. They carefully uncoupled the nav module from the rest of the components in the terminal, and put it in the case Junlei had brought to ensure it wouldn't be damaged in transit.

"Felix and the captain should've been back by now, don't you reckon?" Parvati asked as she checked the time; it'd been over an hour since they'd left, and though the journey up to the bridge from the water had taken them half an hour the first time, that'd been because they hadn't known the way.

"They're not that overdue," Junlei said. "While we wait, maybe we can salvage some more components."

Parvati was at first reluctant to put aside the idea of going off in search of Felix and the captain, but the prospect of being able to work with Junlei a little longer quickly won out. Junlei was a patient and enthusiastic teacher, and they were both so engrossed in what they were doing that another hour passed before either of them checked the time.

"I know the captain said to stay, but I think we oughta go look for them," Parvati said.

"I agree." Junlei was already packing up her tools.

When they returned to the hole that they'd entered the ship through, there was no sign of either lifeboat or any of the crew.

"Captain?" Parvati said into her radio. "Felix? Nyoka? Anyone?" No one replied. "Where did they all go? They wouldn't leave us behind, right?"

"They might not have had a choice." Junlei's mouth was set in a thin line. "I've heard stories of colonists left stranded on Monarch who were driven mad by the toxins and resorted to, amongst other things, attacking and…eating each other. I don't usually pay those stories much mind, but even the most outlandish tales come from an element of truth. "

"We've outmanoeuvred pirates before. It'd take more than a few marauders to bring the crew down; more than would have been able to sneak up on us." Parvati anxiously toggled the talk button on her radio several times. "I'm going to try ADA. Maybe the captain managed to get a message to her."

But there was no reply from ADA either, only the unnerving buzz of static.

"It must be the trees," Junlei said. "There are at least two hundred metres of dense jungle between us and the _Unreliable_."

"That's not too far to walk, right? We could go back to ship and…well, I'm not sure, but I'd rather be there than here."

"I'd want to be better armed before walking through the jungle, even for two hundred metres. And I'm not entirely sure which direction the _Unreliable_ is from here."

Parvati deflated. "Me neither. And all the navigation equipment was in the lifeboat. What do you think we should do?"

"I think our best option will be to stay put for now, but let's get up somewhere high in case we're still here after dark. It'll keep us out of reach of most predators."

"Y-yeah, right. That's a good idea." Parvati didn't even want to think about what might happen if they had to spend the night stranded on the _Hope_ —and she definitely didn't want to think about getting stuck here forever and becoming another cautionary story of why people should stay away from the mainland—but it would be smart to plan for the worst-case scenario.

Junlei took Parvati through the _Hope_ 's maintenance shafts, emerging from a hatch on the top of the ship that didn't quite clear the jungle canopy. But they were close enough that Parvati could see the rays of the setting sun touching the tops of the trees; a sight which should have been beautiful but now only invoked dread.

"You said earlier that you worked in the Edgewater cannery," Junlei said as she sat down in a corner so she wouldn't slide across the angled deck. "What did you do there?"

Parvati tucked herself into the opposite corner. "Well I was mostly responsible for keeping the cannery machines working. As well as fixing other little odds and ends like the vending machines and occasionally the elevator when it broke down. Nothing glamorous like running a ship."

"Oh, there's nothing glamorous about running a ship either." Junlei smiled at Parvati like she was about to share a secret. "It's mostly paperwork, when you get down to it. And chasing down people to file their paperwork. I almost get excited every time I get the chance to get my hands dirty."

"I think this counts as a little more than 'getting your hands dirty'."

"Yes, I think this will be quite enough adventure to tide me over for some time."

They continued sharing small stories as night fell around them. Still, no one came looking for them or responded over the radio.

"Looks like we're staying the night," Junlei said as Parvati was working up the courage to broach the subject of what they were going to do. "We should find somewhere enclosed and more defensible. Maybe one of the officer's quarters near the bridge. We'll have to sleep in the enviro-suits, but there's no reason we can't do that in a bed."

"Right, and we'll go look for the crew first thing in the morning," Parvati said with as much optimism as she could muster.

Junlei smiled, but it was clear that her heart wasn't in it either. "That's right, so we'd better make sure we're well rested."

They found a room with two beds and an intact door, and pushed a cupboard in front of it for good measure to keep out any critters that might try to sneak in during the night. It was still early according to Parvati's watch, but it'd been a long day, and she was asleep before she could think about how much of a crick in the neck sleeping like this was going to give her.

-

She did wake up with a sore neck, but more importantly, she and Junlei had survived a night on Monarch. A night in a sealed room in the middle of a large shipwreck, but, still. How many people could say they'd accomplished the same?

"Good morning, Parvati." Junlei put away the datapad she'd been working on. "The sun should be up, or coming up soon. Are you ready to head back out?"

"Any word over the radio?" Parvati asked hopefully.

"No, but that doesn't mean anything. I'm sure they're still out there."

The jungle didn't look much different in the morning light to the previous afternoon. It was still as eerily quiet and forebodingly still, but there did seem to be fresh scratch marks on the metal floor, as if something had dragged itself up out of the water. While Junlei frowned and followed the scratch marks to the edge of the opening in the hull, Parvati cast her gaze out the other side and saw a familiar shape meandering through the swamp.

"We should at least make our way to solid land," Junlei said behind Parvati. "The ground's too unstable here to—"

"Junlei, the lifeboat came back."

"Oh good, we can—" Junlei turned and cut herself off at what she saw.

"Yeah." They both stared as it drifted aimlessly with the current, headed roughly towards them. "Just the boat."

Still, when it got close enough for them to climb on, Parvati couldn't help but hope they'd find _someone_ inside, asleep or passed out or otherwise unable to pilot the boat, but it was empty. Of people, that was. All their supplies were still inside, which meant the crew hadn't intended on leaving the boat for very long.

The enviro-suits contained a limited supply of fluids and liquid nutrients that could be delivered to the wearer intravenously and had kept Parvati and Junlei going through the night, but now that they could take their enviro-suits off, they could eat real food while they discussed their next steps.

"Should we head back to the _Unreliable_ or go into the jungle, do you think?" Parvati asked. She longed to return to somewhere that felt safe and sure, but at the same time, she couldn't bear the thought of leaving the crew behind.

"We should look for the crew," Junlei said. "They might need our help, and the current couldn't have carried the lifeboat very far. If we went back to the _Unreliable_ , there wouldn't be anything we could do from there anyway."

"Into the jungle then," Parvati said, mostly to herself. "The jungle that the rest of the crew disappeared into. And everyone who was on the _Hope_. And everyone else who was sent after them. Just the two of us. Going into the jungle." They had their weapons now, but Parvati couldn't stop thinking about the raptidon they'd seen on their way in. The _baby_ raptidon.

"Is everything alright, Parvati?" When Parvati looked up, Junlei was giving her a quizzical look.

"Yup! Just psyching myself up." Parvati let out a laugh that hopefully sounded less hysterical than she felt.

"We'll likely have to leave the boat behind, so we should pack some bags," Junlei said, pulling out empty packs from one of the compartments. "We'll need all the nutrient packs, some of the packaged food and drink in case we get the chance to make use of them, spare batteries for the torches, extra filters for the enviro-suits, flares, rope, first aid kits."

"Spare ammo." Light ammo for Parvati's pistol, and energy cells for Junlei's plasma rifle.

"Yes. That could be the most important of them all."

Junlei also took one of the axes from the lifeboat as a backup weapon while Parvati stuck with her trusty hammer. Once they'd put everything they thought they would need into the packs, Parvati started up the lifeboat motor and steered it back in the direction it had come from while Junlei sat by the front window and relayed navigation instructions.

When they could go no further through the swamp waters, they donned their enviro-suits again and firmly tied the lifeboat to two trees as well as dropping the anchor and turning on a transponder inside to help them find their way back again. Even though they both knew it was unlikely the beacon would help if the jungle really was blocking radio signals, neither of them said anything.

After a few hours of trudging through the forest in an arbitrary direction they'd picked upon leaving the boat, Parvati began to see flashes of movement out of the corner of her eye. However, when she turned her head, there was nothing there. Her water levels were a bit on the low side so she attributed the visions to dehydration and administered a dose of fluids through the enviro-suit, but a few minutes later, she thought she saw it again.

"Do you get the feeling that someone's following us?" she asked Junlei. "Or something?"

Junlei shifted her rifle to a ready position. "Did you see something?"

"I thought so, but every time I look, there's nothing. I thought I might be seeing things. I've been told I have an overactive imagination."

"Let's stop a moment anyway and see if anything comes of it. The Monarch wildlife is especially good at blending in with its surroundings."

They made their way to a small clearing and stood back to back with their weapons at the ready, staying completely still. For a few minutes, not a single leaf in the jungle stirred, but just as Parvati was about to suggest they get moving again, she spotted a ripple in the undergrowth.

"I've got something," she whispered.

"Me too," Junlei whispered back.

Parvati tightened her grip on her hammer and bent her knees slightly in anticipation. At her back, she felt Junlei raise her rifle. Another ripple was all the warning they got before a raptidon leapt out from the bushes, its teeth bared and bright blue frills spread wide. Its head was probably the size of Parvati's torso, but before the fear could overtake her, instinct propelled her forward and had her swinging her hammer overhead and slamming it down with all the force she could bring to bear.

The hammer head caught the raptidon's foot, and as it reared up to retaliate, Parvati swung her hammer up into the underside of its jaw. With a smaller creature, the blow would have been enough to knock it away or even kill it, but all it did to the raptidon was daze it for a few seconds.

Parvati backed up as it blindly swiped at her with one paw, then turned on the battery pack she'd installed on the hammer to activate its electrical charge. When the charge was ready, she took a running start and jumped high into the air just before reaching the raptidon, raising her hammer at the height of her arc so that the head landed on the raptidon with maximum force. It twitched violently for a few seconds as electricity coursed through it, then it became still, its mouth hanging open and eyes glazing over.

Triumphant, Parvati turned around to see how Junlei was faring with her opponent, and found her pinned to the ground under the second raptidon's paw. But before she could intervene, Junlei sent a plasma blast right through the raptidon's head, and rolled out from under it as it crumpled to the ground.

"Did we do it?" Not wanting to celebrate prematurely, Parvati made sure to scrutinise their surroundings before declaring them the victors. "We did it! We fought off two raptidons and survived! We're—you're bleeding."

Blood was slowly dripping from a tear in Junlei's enviro-suit.

"Shit." She pressed a hand to the tear. "Pass me the first aid kit."

Junlei injected a shot of adreno into her suit's induction port while Parvati cleaned the wound as best she could without worsening the tear in the suit, then stuck an adhesive bandage over the top and patched the tear with the tape in the field repair kit.

"How are you feeling?" she asked as she stood up to inspect Junlei's face for sweat, unnatural paleness, or dilated pupils. Their helmets clanked together as Parvati leaned in.

"Fine," Junlei said after a moment of consideration. "The suit must have taken the brunt of the blow. We should keep moving lest the scent of the corpses attract more raptidons."

"Yeah, that's probably a good idea."

They left the clearing a little quicker than they'd entered it, eager to put some space between them and the battle site.

After several hours, Parvati gradually became aware of a beeping sound. She'd been so focused on keeping an eye out for more raptidons and keeping her other eye on Junlei to make sure she really was feeling alright that the beeping had gone unnoticed until it grew loud and incessant enough that it couldn't be ignored.

"I'm picking up a signal!" Parvati said, looking at the scanner she'd been constantly holding in her hand, hoping to pick something up.

"What is it?" Junlei stopped and turned around.

"I think it's the other lifeboat's transponder. It's coming from over there."

The area the signal was coming from didn't look any different to the rest of the jungle, but they only had to walk in that direction for a few minutes before the trees began to thin and the ground became softer and softer under their feet.

"I think we're coming back into the swamp," Junlei said. "Watch your step."

The wispy grasses that grew on patches of dirt looked deceptively like solid ground, and both of them plunged into the water several times, though thankfully only up to their knees. By the time the water grew deeper—about waist height, judging by the stick Junlei was using to probe the ground ahead of them—it was easier to pick out a path through the swamp.

They might have missed the lifeboat entirely if not for the signal from the transponder. It was hidden under a tangle of bushes, mud smeared over its bright orange paint helping it blend in.

"It's a good sign, right?" Parvati said. "If the others had time to hide the lifeboat, then they weren't in danger, and they planned on coming back." Although she couldn't imagine what would have driven them to sail so far away from the _Hope_ in the first place.

"They could have," Junlei said. "Let's take a look inside and see if they left any clues as to where they went next."

But before they could clear the branches away from the airlock door, Parvati saw a distinctly human-shaped figure running towards them through the trees, and not in a friendly manner.

"We've got company," she warned Junlei. "I don't think it's a raptidon this time. Are you up for a fight?"

Junlei checked the magazine of her rifle. "Let's do this."

Parvati had never killed a person before, but when she saw one of the marauders take aim at Junlei with a machete, it was almost easy for Parvati to bring her hammer down on their back then again into the back of their head.

It was hard to keep track of everyone in the chaos, but the marauders had to outnumber them three to one. Luckily for them, guns seemed to be hard to come by on Monarch—too difficult to keep maintaining them and producing the ammunition, most likely—so the marauders were only armed with melee weapons. Junlei was able to keep most of them busy with her rifle and take down a few while Parvati took care of the rest.

When the fighting stopped, Junlei let out a groan and pressed a hand to her side.

Parvati was by her side in a flash. "Did one of them get you?"

"No, it's the scratch from earlier. I think some poison may have gotten in after all."

"What can we do?"

"Until we can get to somewhere safe, preferably with someone who knows more about medicine than just basic first aid, not much. Adreno should keep the worst of the symptoms at bay for the time being."

"We've only got four syringes of adreno left, but maybe there'll be more inside."

They climbed into the airlock and looked through the window while the decontamination procedures ran. It was a complete mess inside, with empty containers and ripped-open packets strewn about the floor and benches, the cupboard doors left raptidons wide open.

"The crew might not have been the ones to hide the lifeboat," Junlei murmured.

"Do you think the marauders took them and hid the boat as a trap? Do you think more of them are coming? What if they set a trap inside the boat as well?"

The light in the decontamination chamber turned green, and the computer informed them they were safe to proceed to the main body of the lifeboat.

"I think it's getting late and we might not be able to find any other shelter before it gets dark." Junlei opened the door and stepped inside. "And if the marauders had set a trap inside, I don't think they would have bothered to attack us when it was clear we were trying to get in."

By the time Parvati finished getting out of her suit, Junlei had only taken off her helmet. Without two layers of tinted glass in the way, the grey pallor of her face was easy to see.

"Do you want to eat something?" Parvati asked after helping Junlei out of the rest of her suit and setting her down on one of the benches.

"Just some water will do. And some rest, then I'll be alright."

From Junlei's shallow breaths and the way her eyes kept drifting shut, Parvati was beginning to doubt Junlei would wake up again if she fell asleep. "There's gotta be something in here that can help." She opened up the first aid kit again, taking a closer look at its contents.

"A doctor might be able to put something together, but no one's been able to develop a single drug to combat the effects of being exposed to the toxins on Monarch yet. It's part of the reason the Board wanted to stop evacuating colonists—it was getting too expensive to get everyone the medical treatment they needed, especially the longer they stayed on the mainland."

"We'll have to find Ellie, then. There hasn't been a scrape the crew has gotten into that she hasn't been able to get us out of."

"I'll be fine, Parvati, I don't think that much poison got through. I just need another shot of adreno and a good night's rest."

"Pardon me for saying so, but you don't look so good, Junlei." Not that Junlei would ever look anything less than beautiful to Parvati's eyes, but it was clear from a glance that she was unwell.

"I am a little cold." Junlei patted the space next to her. "Come sit by me?"

There wasn't a proper blanket in the lifeboat, so the best Parvati could do to generate some heat was to huddle up next to Junlei under a space blanket.

"Tell me about _Groundbreaker_ ," Parvati said in an attempt to keep Junlei awake a little longer. "Do you remember sailing to the mainland to evacuate colonists?"

"Only vaguely. I was still quite young when the Board gave the order to stop, and all the times we stopped at the mainland, I was never allowed to leave the ship. But I remember looking out the windows at the jungle, thinking what a marvellous thing it was, to see such unfettered growth of plant life outside the botanical labs of the outposts. I'm not feeling so positive now." Junlei let out a weak chuckle.

"How did people survive on Monarch for so long?" The evacuation had gone on for over twenty years, and Parvati couldn't imagine anyone living in a place like this for so long when the two of them had barely survived a day and a half.

"It wasn't so bad in the beginning. First it was the soil—the crops started to fail and livestock began dying, and people were going hungry. That was when various corporations started making forays into the idea of floating outposts away from the polluted mainland. When the idea turned out to be viable, the Board was formed to coordinate the construction of outposts large enough to be cities. They enforced strict rules about the usage of chemicals and treatment of waste to try and avoid a repeat of what happened on the mainland with all the factories doing as they liked. Nevermind that the corporations that owned these factories were now the very ones constructing outposts and laying down the rules.

"They tried to implement rules on Monarch too, but it was too late. The poison in the soil spread to the water, the plants, the air. Those who wanted to stay, whether out of stubbornness or to conduct research or to try and reverse the degradation of the land, built domed cities that were carefully filtered to keep out the toxins. The domes worked, but they weren't as cost-effective as the floating outposts, so the evacuations continued."

"Are there still domed cities out there now, do you think?"

"I couldn't say," Junlei replied. "The Board allows even less discussion of them than it does of our people's history."

If there were still non-marauder people left on the mainland, they might be able to help, but even if it was just the empty shells of the cities left behind, Parvati might be able to rig up something to provide them with somewhere more habitable than a lifeboat to stay in while they continued to search for the crew.

But when she turned back to Junlei to share her thoughts, Junlei's eyes had drifted shut and didn't reopen after Parvati gently nudged her in the side. She was still breathing though, steadily if shallowly, and her heartbeat was strong. Maybe she was right, and a good night's rest would help her overcome the worst of the poison's effects.

Parvati gently laid Junlei down on the floor so she could sleep more comfortably, and tucked part of a lifejacket under her head as a pillow before settling down behind her. Parvati tucked herself up against Junlei as close as she dared to get, and pulled the space blanket around the both of them. It was almost cosy, if one ignored the scratching of branches against the outside of the lifeboat, and didn't think about the marauder corpses strewn about the jungle around them.

They would attract predators, Parvati belatedly realised, but it was too late to move somewhere safer, if such a place even existed close enough for them to make it there. Parvati felt for the pistol strapped to her thigh, resting her hand on the comforting shape and trying to stay alert for anyone attempting to break into the lifeboat, but it wasn't long before her eyelids grew heavy too, and at some time during the night, she fell asleep.

-

Parvati awoke with a start, her body convinced danger was nearby even though everything appeared still and quiet when the frantic pounding of her heart calmed. Her next concern was Junlei, still asleep, but thankfully, asleep, and not…anything else.

"Junlei?" Parvati whispered. "Junlei, wake up. It's morning." At least, the darkness coming through the windows didn't seem as absolute as before.

It took several more attempts, but Junlei eventually stirred. "Parvati?" she mumbled, her eyes only half open. Her skin was still pale, but not quite as grey. Maybe she really was getting better.

"How are you feeling?" Parvati asked. "Do you want another shot of adreno?" They only had three syringes left, but there would be no use in saving them for later if Junlei needed one now.

"Maybe in a while. I need to wake up first. Do we have any caffenoid pills?"

That they had a whole bottle of, but Parvati was sure she'd read somewhere you weren't supposed to mix stimulants. "Should you be taking those? How about water and some…purpleberry munch?" She chose one of the packaged snacks at random and held it out to Junlei.

"I'll drink some water, but I haven't much of an appetite, I'm afraid. I just feel…exhausted. Like I've just stayed up the entire night before an early shift reading up on the latest specs." Junlei gave Parvati a tired smile. "A few caffenoid pills usually does the trick. Then a shot of adreno after to help flush out the remaining toxins, and I'll be right as rain."

"Alright." Parvati handed over the pill bottle.

It could have been either the caffenoid or the adreno—or both, Parvati supposed—but the colour gradually returned to Junlei's face, and when she stood up and stretched—carefully, so as to not aggravate the still-healing scratch on her side—it didn't seem to require as much effort as it had the night before.

"Did we have any visitors in the night?" Junlei asked as they were putting on their enviro-suits.

"I don't think so," Parvati said. "I tried to stay awake, but I ended up falling asleep."

The sight that greeted them outside was not pleasant. Raptidons—or whatever other predators roamed the jungle—had feasted on the marauder corpses, leaving some half-eaten torsos and detached limbs behind, and long blood trails where they'd dragged off a corpse to eat elsewhere.

"We're lucky the lifeboat is sealed so well," Junlei said, pausing on the threshold of the airlock.

"Yeah, I don't think they could smell us inside." There were a few scratches and muddy pawprints on the exposed prow of the lifeboat, but that was the extent of the damage. "Where to next?"

"There, perhaps, where the undergrowth is not so thick." Junlei pointed at a gap in the trees where the branches and leaves of the bushes had been bent and crushed.

"Someone's been through here recently," Parvati said when they neared and could see depressions in the trampled undergrowth. "They might not have been human, though."

"If the crew ran afoul of marauders, they could have been taken back to the marauders' camp. And if those marauders we encountered yesterday were lying in wait, their camp can't be far."

"This way, then?"

Junlei nodded. "But let us also keep an eye out for raptidons."

They made good headway through the jungle for the first two hours, but then Junlei began to slow, stumbling over exposed roots and the uneven ground. Parvati stuck close after a particularly bad fall almost cracked the faceplate of Junlei's helmet, but there was nothing she could do to help speed up their progress when Junlei's strength was starting to falter again even with another shot of adreno. Maybe it was the caffenoid pills that had done it before, then, but they didn't have any caffenoid in injectable form, and Junlei couldn't remove her helmet to take the pills.

"You should go on ahead." After another two hours of slow going, Junlei finally said the words Parvati had been hoping not to hear. "The lifeboat should be due west of our current position; I'll make my way back there, and you can come back for me once you find the rest of the crew."

"Not a chance in hell," Parvati said, pulling Junlei's arm over her shoulder. "We're split up enough already, I'm not letting you go off on your own, and I don't want to be alone either."

"I'll only slow you down, Parvati. You stand a better chance of finding the others without me holding you back."

"You're not holding me back. I need you." Not just her expansive knowledge of just about any subject, or her clever deductions and advice, but also her steadfast and calming presence; without Junlei by her side, Parvati was sure she would have panicked and done something stupid long before now. "We're doing this together. One step at a time." She took a step forward to illustrate her point, and waited for Junlei to do the same before taking another.

One step at a time, they carried on.

-

Parvati wasn't even sure what direction they were going in anymore, just focusing on putting one foot in front of the other as she took on more and more of Junlei's weight. When she stopped for a break at some time around midday, Junlei's eyes were barely open. Parvati gave her their last shot of adreno, and Junlei slowly blinked several times before her eyes focused on Parvati.

"How are you holding up?" she asked.

"Me?" Parvati said.

"Well, you are doing most of the work."

"I'm okay. As long as you're okay."

"I'm okay." Junlei's eyes briefly drifted shut again. "I just need to rest. You should—"

"Nuh uh, I'm not leaving you, that's not even an option. I can do the walking for both of us while you rest."

Even with the adreno, Junlei could barely keep her feet under her, and their progress when they continued was excruciatingly slow. Still, Parvati was determined they would see this through together, and she didn't let go of Junlei even when she spotted a flash of movement through the trees. She did slowly lower them both to the ground, though.

Parvati remained perfectly still for several minutes, and was rewarded with another flash of movement in roughly the same spot, then again. She couldn't see what it was, exactly, but it didn't move like anything organic.

"I'm going to see what's over there," she whispered to Junlei. "I'm not leaving you behind," she stressed. "I'll be back in a flash. Don't go anywhere."

Parvati stayed low, crawling through the bushes—and being extremely glad that the enviro-suit also protected her from all the creepy-crawlies she could see—until she discovered the source of what had looked like movement, but was actually the sunlight glinting off a curved metal structure. One of the domed cities Junlei had been talking about?

Parvati wriggled forward a little more, then pulled back when an armoured figure came out through a smashed opening in the dome that apparently served as a door. The domed city had probably once been home to colonists, but now it looked like it had been abandoned or destroyed, and taken over by marauders.

She almost turned back then, intending to pick up Junlei and give this place a wide berth, but then a thought occurred to her: a marauder camp would have supplies, right? With all the fighting they did, probably first aid supplies, and if they were managing to survive in the jungle without proper protective gear, they had to be using _something_ to stave off the effects of the toxins. Something that Junlei could use.

Parvati crawled up to the dome as close as she dared and looked inside. To her dismay, there were tens of marauders milling about the camp, too many for her to take out on her own or try to sneak past to look for their supplies. But the marauders were using lights to illuminate the parts of the dome where the plants had grown through the twisted metal and shattered glass, and were blocking out the sunlight. Electric lights, that had to be connected to a power source somewhere.

Parvati traced the wires to a battery on one side of the dome not far from her current position, which was in turn hooked up to what looked like solar panels mounted high on a metal truss that stretched above the canopy. But more importantly, in the battery was a power regulator that she could remove to cause a surge of current through the lights.

She couldn't see the fallout from here, but she could hear the lights exploding as well as the mixture of shocked and enraged yells from the marauders. They would come out to search for the cause of the malfunction, and she'd go in.

She found another opening along the wall and charged in, hammer first, at the first marauder she saw. They weren't expecting her and went flying off their feet, down a slope and out of sight. The second marauder came charging towards her but the reach of her hammer was greater than that of their machete, and she took care of the third with the downswing. The fourth…was not a marauder.

They aborted their attack the same time Parvati did, and the two of them stared at each other for a few seconds before the other person—they looked like a man, a regular one, not someone who might be a people-eating marauder—ran off to attack another marauder. It was then that Parvati realised there were more not-marauders in the camp; when had they gotten here?

There was quite a sizeable number of them, and they took care of the remaining marauders without much difficulty. Once things were quiet, one of the not-marauders—probably the one Parvati had met—pointed her out to another, who made a show of very carefully holstering their gun before approaching her.

"Who are you, to attack a marauder camp on your own?" asked the man who appeared to be the leader of the group.

"I'm uh, Parvati." Parvati mentally kicked herself; he was probably more interested in where she'd come from and who she was affiliated with, not who she actually was.

But to her surprise, the man gave her a scrutinising look. "Of the _Unreliable_?"

Parvati perked up. "Have you seen my crew?"

"I can do you one better: I know where they are. My people came across them in another marauder camp much like this one, only they weren't doing nearly as well as you were. Once they were rescued, your captain asked me to send a search party to the _Hope_ after you and Junlei Tennyson, but I see the search party will be returning empty-handed." The man held out his hand. "William Hunte. Former captain of the _Hope_ , current leader of the settlement Fortitude."

"Oh!" Parvati said as she shook his hand. "You're…" She looked around at the others. "You're the crew of the _Hope_?"

"Most of us. Others were colonists we encountered on Monarch, and some were even born in our settlement in the last twenty years."

"That's great news! Junlei will be so happy to hear that."

"Where is Junlei?"

"Not far. She was injured in a fight yesterday, and we've run out of supplies. I came here to see if there was anything I could use."

"We'll help you bring her to Fortitude. Lead the way."

-

There was much rejoicing when Parvati was reunited with the crew. Some of them were in better shape than others, having also encountered marauders and raptidons in varying quantities and being briefly kept prisoner, but the important thing was that they were all there.

After they'd swapped stories of how they'd all come to meet up here, while Junlei was still being seen to by Fortitude's doctors—the very ones who'd disappeared with the _Hope_ and were well experienced in treating cases of toxic exposure—there was little for Parvati to do except wander through the settlement.

The air smelled strange, stale and completely odourless after being passed through so many filters to strain the toxins, and without any of the salt that had been an ever-present part of Parvati's entire life. The people were dressed simply, their clothes worn and patched with odd scraps of fabric that didn't quite match. The buildings were like that too, little higgledy piggledy structures constructed from a mixture of scrap metal, mud, and wood. The settlement was nothing like the orderly grid layout of corporation-approved outpost designs, but felt like it'd been put together with love and care.

The next morning, the sun hadn't even risen yet when Parvati hurried over to the clinic to check on Junlei, but to her surprise, she wasn't the only one there. Junlei was sitting up in bed, datapad resting in her lap as she held what looked like a meeting with Captain Hunte and several other colonists.

Junlei stopped the conversation when she caught sight of Parvati. "Good morning, Parvati," she said with a broad smile.

"Junlei!" Parvati exclaimed, too surprised to feel awkward about interrupting. "You're working already?"

Junlei did look much better than she had before, but considering she'd been on death's door just the previous evening, it wasn't saying much.

"She's right, Jun, we should leave you to rest." Captain Hunte patted Junlei's shoulder. "Everyone out, there'll be plenty of time to discuss how to take down the Board once we're off this godforsaken island. For now, I want everything packed up and ready to go before dawn tomorrow."

Everyone filed out, leaving Parvati alone with Junlei. She wondered if she should leave too, but then Junlei motioned at one of the chairs next to her bed.

"I'm glad you came by," Junlei said. "I wanted to thank you for everything you did to get us here."

"Oh, it was nothing. You would have done the same for me," Parvati said as she sat down. Eager to point Junlei's attention elsewhere—her eyes were so kind and her smile was so soft—Parvati said, "You and Captain Hunte seem to know each other well."

"I saw him around quite a bit when I was young. He and my grandmother would meet often to coordinate pickups from the mainland and exchange stories of what they'd seen or dangers they'd encountered. I'm glad we were able to find him and his crew."

"What will they do once they get out of here?"

"Everyone needs to know the truth. We're putting together a list of evidence that can hopefully be used to remove the Board from power and replace them with elected leaders from each of the outposts. Once the political climate has stabilised, some of the _Hope_ 's scientists believe the damage that was done to the mainland is reversible, and that we might one day be able to return."

"Sounds like you've got a lot of work ahead of you."

"And I've still got to fix up the nav module and install it on _Groundbreaker_ on top of everything," Junlei said with a weary smile.

Parvati had almost forgotten that was the reason they'd come to Monarch. "From what I've seen, you'll have a lot of willing volunteers to help you share the load."

Junlei nodded. "I do have a good crew." She looked at Parvati for a long time, as if there was something else she wanted to say, but more conversation was not forthcoming.

"I should go help the others pack up." Parvati stood up.

"Yes, I'll see you back on the _Unreliable_."

Parvati could feel Junlei's eyes on her back the whole way out of the room.

-

Not everyone could fit on the _Unreliable_ , so the journey back to _Groundbreaker_ would have to be done in multiple trips. Once they were back on the Typhon River, they were far away enough from the jungle that the trees couldn't block the signals from the ship's long-range radio transmitter, and Junlei arranged for _Groundbreaker_ to meet them at the mouth of the river. When they arrived, UDL gunships had formed a blockade between them and the _Groundbreaker_ as well as what looked like several dozen civilian ships spread out across the sea.

"This is Junlei Tennyson, captain of _Groundbreaker_ ," Junlei broadcasted from the _Unreliable_.

"And William Hunte, captain of the _Hope_." Captain Hunte was standing next to her in the control room.

Parvati liked to imagine that his words gave the crews of the gunships pause.

"I don't know what stories the Board has been feeding the colony about what happened to us, but here is a long-overdue account of things from our side: that day, we deviated from our usual course to respond to a distress signal, not knowing that our radar and nav module had been tampered with, and we became grounded in shallow waters without ever realising something had gone wrong. Still, we took to the boats and continued following the distress signal, hoping to lend a hand to someone in need, but all we found was a beacon planted in the middle of a raptidon den. The _Hope_ lost many good people that day.

"And over the next twenty years, we would continue to lose more and more. We tried sending distress signals of our own, but no one ever responded to them, let alone sent search and rescue ships after us. In fact, when we tried to get back to the open sea ourselves, we were shot at by UDL gunships and driven back into the jungle. The Board didn't lose the _Hope_ , it tried to bury it. All because we refused to stop evacuating colonists from the mainland, the mainland the corporations on the Board destroyed in the first place. We need to let them go, and fix this ourselves."

" _Groundbreaker_ stands by the _Hope_ ," Junlei said. " It's time the Board answered for its crimes. You can stand down or declare civil war. Make the right choice."

A tense few minutes passed in which none of the ships moved, but then static on the radio preceded a message from one of the gunship captains.

"We stand with you also, Captain Hunte. Captain Tennyson."

"Then hold the line," Captain Hunte replied. "We have many more to evacuate from the mainland, and the transports will need to be defended against those who continue to blindly follow the Board."

The _Unreliable_ ran several more trips along the river, ferrying colonists to _Groundbreaker_ before she was relieved by the transport ships that would see the rest of the colonists from Fortitude safely off the mainland.

When the last load of colonists disembarked from the _Unreliable_ , the captain called the crew up to the kitchen. It seemed like half a lifetime ago that they'd stood there planning for their trip to Monarch, not a mere four days.

"We'll be docked at _Groundbreaker_ for a time," the captain said. "There's so much going on with the _Hope_ and the crew's accusations against the Board that I want to see through, and I'm not sure when we'll set sail again. So I'm releasing you all from my crew for the time being. One day, I'll call on you, and maybe we can pick up where we left off, or maybe you'll be out having adventures of your own, and you can tell me your stories over a round of drinks. But for now, this is where we'll rest."

Parvati wasn't sure where she'd go—maybe back to Edgewater, to see if she could help make life better there with all that she'd learned about being a little bolder from the captain and Junlei. She cleaned her room of all her personal effects, then went down to the control room one last time.

"Will you be lonely with everyone gone, ADA?" she asked, sitting down in the captain's chair. "I could stay. I'm sure there's engineering work on _Groundbreaker_."

"It is kind of you to worry about me, Parvati, but fear not, there are other AIs on board _Groundbreaker_ I can communicate with, and I will still have SAM."

Parvati smiled. "He does make good company."

Someone knocked on the doorway to the control room. "Parvati, someone's waiting in the docking bay for you," the captain said.

Junlei was waiting on the walkway outside the _Unreliable_ 's berth, datapad in hand. Further down the docking bay, Parvati could see a crowd of people no doubt eager to get in a word with Junlei, being held back by the Mardets.

"Did you need something?" Parvati asked as she descended the _Unreliable_ 's ramp.

"I wanted to ask if you'd like to stay. I saw what you were capable of back on Monarch, and we could use more people like you around here. Not just your skills as a mechanic, but as someone who's not afraid to keep pressing forward until they achieve their goal. It's a quality of yours I greatly admire."

"I do!" Parvati blurted out. "I mean, I would. Like to stay, that is. Here. With you. Or just…on _Groundbreaker_ in general." Parvati felt her face heat up as she blundered her way towards the end of the conversation. Oh Law, why couldn't she just say yes please and thank you like a normal person? If only the ground would open up and swallow her whole and spare her the embarrassment of having to look Junlei in the eye.

But while Parvati stared fixedly at the sweeping walls of the docking bay behind Junlei, Junlei's hand reached out to take hold of hers.

"I'm glad to hear that," Junlei said, and _oh_ , she was putting her lips on Parvati's.

It wasn't that Parvati had never kissed anyone before, but she was certain she was giving off that impression with how woodenly she was returning—or _not_ returning, as it was—Junlei's kiss. By the time her body caught up to her brain, Junlei was pulling away.

"Wait!" Parvati took Junlei's other hand in hers. "I can do better."

Junlei was smiling as Parvati raised her hands to gently cup Junlei's face and capture her lips in a kiss that was immeasurably better than their first attempt. And maybe it was wishful thinking on Parvati's part, but she thought she saw a hint of a blush on Junlei's cheeks.

"Let's get out of here." Junlei cast a look at her waiting petitioners in the docking bay. "There's a back way to my quarters through the maintenance tunnels."

Hand in hand, they slipped off into the darkness.


End file.
